A Day in the Life of the Wired School

By BONNIE ROTHMAN MORRIS

Published: October 5, 2000

THE noise level in Jen Butler's fifth-grade language arts class in Viola Elementary School in Suffern, N.Y., was more fitting for a gymnasium than a class dedicated to reading and writing. But seven days into the school year, the children could not contain their excitement.

In groups of two and three, they poked away at new wireless iBook laptop computers, navigating through three Web sites chosen by their teacher to prepare a report on Gary Paulsen, a popular author of books for young readers.

Down the hall, third graders in Ashley Schuck's class were learning how to scan photos into the computer and waiting to use the three digital cameras that float from class to class in the school. Upstairs, Patty Marina's sixth-grade science class was peering into the world of weather, comparing information culled from a weather satellite receiver on the school's roof with data from weather Web sites on the six computers in the back of the classroom.

''We're tracking tropical storm Florence, and we just predicted it won't hit land,'' Ms. Marina said. Jacob Morales, 10, pointed to a map on the Weather Channel Web site. ''See,'' he said, ''the storm is going here.'' To emphasize his point, Jacob held up an actual globe, pointed to a spot somewhere off the Florida coast and said, ''It's right here.''

Viola Elementary, in Rockland County, is just one of thousands of wired schools in the United States, as the Clinton administration nears its goal of connecting all public schools to the Internet by the end of this year.

But while at least 96 percent of public schools now have Internet access, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, it is often unclear how that access is being used to enhance learning. At some schools, the problem is that there is little else besides an Internet connection -- only out-of-date computers running antiquated software. At other schools, teachers have been reluctant to adopt computers. And some educators and parents question how much computers and the Internet really help children learn.

But then there are schools like Viola Elementary, which is loaded with computers and seems to love it. Along with construction paper and crayons, computers are front and center at Viola, not buried in a separate lab to be used once a week to learn word processing and graphics programs.

The Ramapo Central School District has a technology budget of about $1 million a year for 4,200 students. At Viola, which has 544 students in kindergarten through sixth grade, 22 iBooks are lodged on a cart and make their way into various classrooms for use throughout the day. Six PC's sit in neat rows in every classroom. There are 12 computers in the school library, a computer lab with 20 PC's, and a digital video camera that students can use with the Macintosh iMovie program.

Viola Elementary and schools like it are unusually saturated with technology, but that makes them good places to examine the variety of ways in which computers are used. Students as young as kindergartners may be doing research on the Internet and using e-mail. They learn desktop publishing, use Microsoft Excel to create spreadsheets and use PowerPoint to make slide shows to supplement reports.

In the best-case scenarios, experts say, computers in elementary school classrooms can create learning experiences that help students see the relevance of their studies. These lessons are meant to encourage children to develop what educational theorists call higher-order thinking. Parents may refer to this as fostering plain old imagination and problem-solving skills. The goal, at least for now, seems to be to keep children excited about learning in school.

In many schools, the impetus for computer use comes from outside, from what the students and families are learning at home.

''As early as kindergarten, kids often come to us with computer skills they've learned at home,'' said Roger Woehl, superintendent of the wired West Linn-Wilsonville School District in Clackamas County, Oregon. ''It's a challenge to keep up with the kids. In those early years, students are defining their world, and the environment creates that identity. If technology isn't a part of how they perceive the world, they're going to be at a disadvantage.''

David T. Gordon, editor of The Harvard Education Letter and its book ''The Digital Classroom,'' published this year, said: ''Kids are growing up with the assumption that technology and all its wondrous forms is part of how we communicate. Introducing computers into the classroom is not just a case of going along with some fad. It's a case of responding, in some way, to what students expect and want.''

But the integration of computers in the classroom is still slow, often because of technophobia among teachers. Teachers, as a group, have little time to apply themselves to learning how to use computers and often have even less support from the school districts when they seek training.

Even in districts with a well-conceived technology plan, educators say, the process of adaptation can run off course. Sometimes computer programs are introduced before the students are able to grasp the basic concepts of the lessons. And in many classrooms, computers may still be used to reward students for finishing work early, or to allow students to do drills to prepare them for standardized tests.

No set of teachers is more primed to use computers as a powerful educational tool than are those at the elementary school level.